


All the world will be your enemy

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Study, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 05:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16234901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand Enemies.And when they catch you, they will kill you.But first, they must catch you,digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning.Be cunning and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.— Watership Down, Richard Adams





	All the world will be your enemy

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Harry Potter and The Death Eater Menace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15833898) by [TheSinister_Man](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSinister_Man/pseuds/TheSinister_Man). 



> Inspired by Chapter 23 of Harry Potter and the Death Eater Menace.

> _All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand Enemies.  
> _ _And when they catch you, they will kill you.  
> _ _But first, they must catch you,  
> _ _digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning.  
> _ _Be cunning and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed._    
> — Watership Down, Richard Adams

 

* * *

 

There is a dream. Theo’s had it for years.

When he was younger, after his mother’s death (murder) it was frequent. He would dream of climbing up all the stairs in the house and out of the tiny door that the house elves used for roof maintenance.

Sometimes, in the dream, that was when the gargoyles would get him.

Other times, he makes it right to the edge, bare toes curling over roof tiles and the old lead gutter.

And then he falls, and there is nothing.

They’re the most peaceful nights of sleep he gets until Hogwarts.

 

* * *

 

Harry Potter is an anomaly. Sometimes, Theo feels bad for thinking of his friend in terms of science more than affection, but there really isn’t a better term for him. He’s half what you’d expect and entirely what you’d not and can go weeks seeming to pay no attention only to unhesitatingly prove that he _has._

Theo’s rather glad to call him friend, even if that means spending more time than he’d like with Zabini and Granger and Longbottom.

 

* * *

 

The dream follows. It _chases._

Sometimes, Theo thinks, it _hunts._ A black dog of a nightmare, dogging his footsteps and his sleep.

At home its frequent, at the Malfoys’ it’s often. At Hogwarts it’s _always_ , except some few days when the nightmares’ attention is drawn elsewhere.

It changes, as well. At home, it’s the roof. At the Malfoys’ it’s the old well in the furthest garden, which Lucius said was where ancient wizards used to toss sacrifices. At the bottom, he was told, were a myriad rusted blades and bones. Sometimes it’s the Abraxans or the snakes, but, usually, it’s the well.

At Hogwarts it’s the Astronomy tower.

 

* * *

 

He knows what people would say, if he told them of his nightmare. Something along the lines of “oh you poor dear” while privately thinking him suicidal.

Thing is, he’s not. He’s not even depressed. Oh, he’s feared for his life since before he can remember, but that hasn’t coloured his other moods as much as some might think. If anything its given him a certainty, a sense of spite - his father can go hang, as far as he cares. His brother loves him, his mother cared for him and his father can go _hang._

Hogwarts has only made things better. He has friends now, more people who, like his brother, he knows love him. And, if they love him, and if they value him, then his father’s judgement is proven ever more wrong.

And, certainly, maybe you could doubt the judgement of a halfblood and a muggleborn and a… whatever Blaise is, but Longbottom is as pureblooded as he is and can’t find any faults in Theo that aren’t just because he’s Slytherin.

 

* * *

 

The nightmare only worsens after he’s stripped of his name. It doesn’t surprise him. Whatever it is that's caused this dream to follow him so long is only going to be helped by the lack of House or Name he has now. Is only going to be helped by his fear and worry and everything else.

It's only going to be enabled by the magic that wants all things to hate him.

_Go to the roof,_ it tells him. _Find a pit,_ it tells him.

_Die,_ it tells him, _and you’ll know peace._

_Fuck off,_ he thinks.

 

* * *

 

There are things that lurk in darkness and in sunlight and in the great Beyond and if the man once his father thought Theo wholly ignorant of this then he was more a fool than he’d thought.

He doesn’t know everything, he knows that. He doesn’t even know half. But he knows enough to know that the Wild is not a thing you mess with.

He thinks, now, that if the dream comes from anything, when it comes always, rain or shine, it comes from something Wild.

 

* * *

 

There are things which anchor him as the Wild dream eats at his sanity. Hermione’s group, for example, resolute and unafraid. Blaise, in all his bizarrely chosen friendship. The knowledge that Augusta Longbottom condemns the whole matter and the memory of when he loaned the Notice-Me-Not ring to Harry.

For a long time he’d been too afraid of the man once his father to cross him. Now, with one friend and the one family member he cares for stripped from him, he’s _angry._

Then, the fire comes.

 

* * *

 

It's not targeted at him, the attack. Somehow, that makes everything worse. Sure, it used the effects of the Ultimate Sanction as a basis, but that was never the point of it. It was just an easy weakness exploited as a distraction and its cost his foster family their home, their livelihood, and the kindest House Elf he’s ever met.

It wasn’t _because_ of him, but it was _enabled_ by him. He’s not blind, either. He knows about the meetings the Purebloods have been having, about the hate they hold for him. He knows it's only a matter of time before it spills over and becomes another attack.

The Tonks’ have already lost so much because of him. He doesn’t know what he’d do if his other friends were hurt the same way.

 

* * *

 

The dream whispers. That’s part of what has and what always will make it so dangerous. Theo’s no fool. He’s looked up the meanings of dreams, the arts of Oneiromancy, the ways one can use mind magic to create dreams that destabilise others. He’s not a fool.

But… he hears the dream. He knows its message, as solidly as the stones left by Uagadou’s dream messengers.

_“You’ve reached too highly. You must fall.”_

After the fire, after the mob, after Iris’ death and the attack and everything else, Theo climbs.

 

* * *

 

It is well known and thoroughly proven that time travel should be, by rights, impossible. The only way to travel through time is to live it, or perhaps to use particular parts of Occlumency theory to warp one’s perspective of time. Divination, all papers suggest, is its own kettle of wriggly things.

But time travel, simple time travel, knowing something can/has/will/may happen and going back to stop it, cannot be done.

Hermione isn’t a fool, though, and there’s more than one way to watch the paths of probability, and warn for them.

 

* * *

 

It’s the dream all over again. Theo climbs and climbs and people fall away. Time becomes meaningless.

Theo stands at the top of the Astronomy Tower, utterly, utterly alone.

 

* * *

 

There is a world where he falls. Where the dream is no longer a dream or even a nightmare, but a horror made in burst and bleeding flesh, broken bones and a cold body spread out over grass and soil.

There is a world where Theo No-Name is found at the bottom of the Astronomy Tower, cold, and dead, and broken.

Hermione Granger doesn’t have to live it to know it, and to know that she must stop it.

 

* * *

 

There is a world where Theo’s dream is taken away; the thing it spent so very long building towards taken away until it crumbles like a house of cards. There is a world where kindness and chocolate and a book about rabbits pulled a boy back from the edge - a very _final_ edge.

Instead, Theo No-Name sits at the edge of his dream, and reads a book.

It’s about rabbits.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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